Spring 2017

Lying for a Living

by Steve McCondichie

Jesse Few peddles lies. His boss and clients order a couple. His married girlfriend gets a few. His family buys several. But he saves the top-of-the-line dishonesty to sell to himself.

The forty-nine-year-old suburban rogue focuses on boozing with his golf buddies, chasing much-too, younger women, and surviving the Great Recession that’s raging across the South like it’s the Big Bank’s March to the Sea. His rambling approach to life and love is challenged when his boozy mom believes she’s being stalked by her long-dead first husband and his woebegone son skirmishes with a megalomaniac preacher.

A cowboy-up moment drives him to decide whether he’ll saddle up and rescue his loved ones from these imminent threats or retreat to the familiar comforts of denial, avoidance, and blowing up watermelons with black market machine guns. This is an irreverent mid-life coming-of-age story where an unwitting father and son wrestles with his capacity to mature into a bona fide adult.

Jesse Few is a salesman whose carefree, man-child days of drinking and philandering have caught up with him… McCondichie endows his protagonist with a good deal more depth than initial impressions would indicate. The narrative moves at a good clip as Jesse navigates his way through one crisis after another, among a fully developed cast of supporting characters. Along the way, he figures out how to become the adult that his aging mother and teenage children truly need him to be.

An enjoyable page-turner with a reluctant hero who’s as engaging as he is impulsive.

Steve McCondichie offers readers a likable rogue in Jesse Few and quickly has us rooting for Jesse to become the lovable hero of his story. In addition to creating a memorable protagonist, McCondichie also provides us with a distinctive and surprising cast of secondary characters who keep the scenes fresh, funny, and sometimes poignant. The fact that Jesse grits his teeth and continually makes the hard choices between bad and worse options in Lying for a Living offers all of us hope for change and personal growth.

George Weinstein,

award-winning author of AFTERMATH and HARDSCRABBLE ROAD

Jesse Few isn’t a bad man. He’s just slipped a little, and then a little more, and then . . . well, you get the picture. But faced with a family crisis, Jesse answers the call in his own, inimitable way, and in the process confronts his greatest enemy—himself. This wonderfully entertaining debut, full of vivid southern characters, announces Steve McCondichie as a writer to watch.

Naeem Murr,

winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize

Jesse Few, the hero of Lying for a LIving, is a great creation, a Viagra-popping traveling paper salesman with a married girlfriend, a hot ex-wife he can’t get over, troubled children and a posse of salty golfing buddies who have his back as Jesse sets out to avoid adulthood and fails, as all the good ones do. The story of his journey to save his son moves like Jesse’s pearl-colored Escalade, barreling up the shoulder past the gridlocked traffic on the interstate. I couldn’t resist it.

About the Author

After twenty-fives year peddling bulldozers around the globe, Steve McCondichie exited the corporate world to pursue his true purpose—telling thrilling tales about our meandering journeys through life. A rebel since kindergarten, Steve always gives the underdog antihero ample opportunities for redemption. A believer in the power of kinship he enjoys examining how family shapes the individual and their choices. The Parlor Girl’s Guide is his second novel. Lying for a Living, his debut novel, was published in 2017. A well-traveled native Southerner, he works as a real estate novelist and lives in Newnan, Georgia and Amelia Island, Florida with his lovely wife, Donna, their four children, and five grandchildren.

Also by Steve McCondichie:

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